Thread regarding Sears layoffs

Sheesh...get an education! Stop with screaming the sky is falling. Looks like someone drank too many beers and posted over and over again with the same garbage.

Your need for attention and personal panic should be addressed elsewhere.

The internet is generating massive sales. Stop fear mongerring and get with the program

So sick of the term narrative. Seems to have come to prominence in the last presidential election and so overused. Optics is the other term news commentators just love to use.

overall sales are growing but not in some areas that are traditional for brick and mortar stores. Less dresses, more airline tickets and dining out. Less jackets more art lessons in the mall store. front You missed the part of several stores are growing fast- HD, Costco, TJ Max others are dying off.

I guess who cares right......why is this being rehashed and rehashed again and again? Everyone knows that stores are still very much alive...look at Walmart. You can't take everything that is in the news as fact, and I think we all know that. Look at how the weather has gotten blown out of proportion over the last ten years because of news. If it is going to snow 1-3 inches, it is "big storm incoming." Really that used to be considered a "light dusting."

@rtf- Exactly correct. My only question is why the lenders lend the money when they know what the Vulture Capitalist are doing?

@kvi- Correct. In the 1980's companies went away from the management who actually knew something about the business and how it was run to hiring MBA's from high dollar schools who only cared about the cost factors and shareholders. They forgot about the intangibles of community goodwill, cities and towns and employment, loyalty, and general human ethics. The bottom line was king and they made reputations on how much they saved the company and how much they could sell the pieces of the company. I know I lived through it in the corporate world

If you search for Sears CFOs LinkedIn website you can see they do at least 1B in sales for syw.

Agreed,100%....... internet didn't kill the retail star....corporate management did.

Yup by cutting corners so they can have the money to themselves, even if it met screwing over employees and having stores at minimal staff possible.

Agreed,100%....... internet didn't kill the retail star....corporate management did.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-09/forget-amazon-says-investor-backing-brick-and-mortar-retailers

Forget amazon

Brick and mortar will always exist but Searshas become irrelevant. Too late to change that now.

Brick and Mortar will never truly go away. Online shopping is Sears Holdings excuse as to why sales have hit rock bottom.

Good post. You're exactly right on the % of sales, although total retail sales are growing, not shrinking. For the past 4 years sales have been growing at an overall pace of 3.5% annually. The massive drop in store sales is a market share shift with Walmart picking up a lot on a huge base, compared to retailers like SHLD which are actually quite small - SHLD is about 3% the size of Walmart. The other thing that distorts this is that "retail" includes grocery and such which is more or less stable. Further, categories like apparel are hard hit with the internet taking share like crazy which makes the mall based stores look worse. Like most things, the answers here are pretty nuanced, but brick and mortar will continue to struggle but will of course never go away.

Excellent post. I have said the same thing to people who think Amazon is taking over the world. I merely tell them to check Amazon revenue vs Walmart's. Walmart is still King Kong by far. No doubt internet sales have taken some "brick & mortar" sales but its not the reason why no one shops at Sears/K-mart anymore. Bottom Line: shoppers want a pleasant retail experience. A impossibility at Sears/K-mart.

We don't have the people to. Ship all the online orders. When I look at them all i can think of is all the disappointed customers

The so-called retail apocalypse has mostly been caused by venture capital companies taking retailers private, plundering the cash and socking them with insurmountable debt. They walk away and leave lenders to clean up the mess.

It is an insurmountable goal for us to win online when our website is clunky, there are so many items that are "unavailable" to ship or pick up for whatever reason and the "fusion" stores do not have the proper supplies or staffing levels to fulfill orders.

I read an article that retail experienced sales higher than it has been for 12 years (in store and especially online). I wonder if we will see improvement or if we will stay on the perpetual slide to oblivion.

When fourth quarter results are announced and if we are still stuck in the same old rut, Eddie Lampert will have to find a different excuse this time around, because the economy is in much better shape (a high tide raises all boats so all retailers should see a boost in sales) and, generally speaking, this year's winter weather isn't as bad as it was in years past (not that stops anyone from shopping, regardless of what Eddie believes). Are we going to blame Amazon again (as well as Tesla and Uber, both of which aren't even competitors of Sears Holdings)?

"Therefore, overall online sales are falling dramatically due to the 92% dropping, despite what the 8% is doing."

Correction

"Therefore, overall RETAIL sales are falling dramatically due to the 92% dropping, despite what the 8% is doing."